疯癫大师 (1955)

Les Maitres Fous is about the ceremony of a religious sect, the Hauka, which was widespread in West Africa from the 1920s to the 1950s. Hauka participants were usually rural migrants from Niger who came to cities such as Accra in Ghana (then Gold Coast), where they found work as laborers in the city's lumber yards, as stevedores at the docks, or in the mines. There were at least 30,000 practicing Hauka in Accra in 1954 when Jean Rouch was asked by a small group to film their annual ceremony During this ritual, which took place on a farm a few hours from the city, the Hauka entered trance and were possessed by various spirits associated with the Western colonial powers: the governorgeneral, the engineer, the doctor's wife, the wicked major, the corporal of the guard.The roots of the Hauka lie in traditional possession cults common among the Songhay and Djerma peoples of the Niger River basin. Gifted men and women may enter trance and become possessed by any of a number of strong gods, such as Dongo, god of thunder and the sky.Supplicants consult the god through the trancing medium and receive advice about their problems, cures for diseases, comfort and support, or reprimands for their wrongdoings. Like these traditional possession cults, the Hauka sect co-existed with Islam and incorporated many Islamic saints and heroes into its rituals. Most of its adherents were Muslims.Hauka first appeared in Niger, it is thought, in the person of a former soldier who participated in the savage battles of the second German offensive of World War I in 1917 and 1918, in which West African troops were decimated despite their spectacular performance. This soldier made the pilgrimage to Mecca and returned to Niger in the 1920s. In his village, in Rouch's account, he found the people "doing a traditional dance and the soldier was possessed, very violently possessed, and while possessed he said 'I am the avant-garde of the new gods who are coming from Malia [the Red Sea]. My name is Gov